


He Could Be You

by ruanyu



Series: All Things Counter [6]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Bucky Barnes Feels, Bucky Barnes Remembers, Bucky Barnes Returns, Clint Is a Good Bro, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Smut, Healing, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Mild Smut, Mutual Pining, Not Really Unrequited Love, Original Female Character - Freeform, POV Bucky Barnes, Recovery, Steve Feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-12
Updated: 2016-06-12
Packaged: 2018-07-14 17:25:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7183208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ruanyu/pseuds/ruanyu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve was his only link to what had been, holder of the stories connecting yesterday and today. Steve had offered his unconditional friendship long ago, allowed Bucky to learn to see the beauty in the creature that was the reflection of his soul. Steve was his harbor in the storm, his bridge back to sanity. And now he was looking at Bucky, asking him mutely for reassurance, because he had become used to being relied upon, being the one others looked to for guidance. And Bucky wanted to give him more than reassurance. </p><p>Before he could lose his nerve, he leaned forward and tentatively touched his lips to Steve’s. He didn’t know what he had expected. For everything to make sense immediately, perhaps, for the realization to break that they had done this before, many times. That was not what happened.</p>
            </blockquote>





	He Could Be You

**Author's Note:**

> This story is part of the All Things Counter series and won't make much sense without reading the other stories first. Sorry.

_And my brother lays upon the rocks_  
He could be dead, he could be not, he could be you  
He's chameleon, comedian, Corinthian and caricature 

David Bowie – Bewlay Brothers 

 

Clint was right. The roof was a good place for perspective.

Lobo was a sloping hunched darker shape against the darkening horizon. Bucky watched as the light of the setting sun touched his daemon, bringing out the colors of his mottled hide of sandy grey and brown and black. The hyena’s round bear-like ears flickered as he turned to face Bucky, black muzzle raised in slight question. _Demon thing. Ugly beast._ The taunts came back from long ago. He remembered how he had wanted the hyena to change into something else, not to settle into this misshapen creature. He remembered the times when he had felt fondness for his demon, the tug of reluctant affection. _You and me against the world._

 

Something moved behind Bucky, and he spun around. Clint was standing there, too close, yet not close enough to reach him, to hurt him. A calculated distance. The archer had deliberately warned him, forgoing his usual soft-footed silence. 

“Bruce asked me to come find you,” Clint said, too evenly. His chameleon daemon perched on his shoulder, scales muted green, eyes swivelling. 

Bruce. Not Steve. 

Bucky opened his mouth to ask how Steve was, and then closed it sharply. He wanted to know if Steve was safe. But Steve would be coming back to news that Bucky had hurt another of his friends. How could he ask? _Ask him,_ Lobo said. 

“Just spit it out,” Clint said laconically.

“What did he say?” Bucky asked, the words coming out too harsh, too jagged. 

Clint gave a little nod, regarding him thoughtfully. “I thought you would ask about that first. Nat thought you’d want to know how the mission went.”

“I hurt Jane,” Bucky said, bluntly. “Like I hurt Natasha.” 

Clint nodded, once. “There is a tiny difference.” He moved forward, closer, stopped when he was standing shoulder to shoulder with Bucky, looking out across the city. “Jane said you didn’t mean to hurt her. You did mean to hurt Natasha. I could have killed you when I saw those bruises around her neck.” His voice was level, disconcertingly conversational. “I wanted to kill you.”

“But you didn’t do anything,” Bucky said, because he needed to know what prevented an Avenger from avenging. “You’ve never even tried.”

Clint smiled, wry. “Nat warned me to back off. Made it very clear she didn’t need anyone, man or woman, to protect her.”

Bucky glanced at the archer, wondered if Clint loved Natasha, and if she loved him back. He knew that Clint was a good man. He had no powers, but he fought like he did, as bravely as if he did. And Steve trusted Clint and Natasha to fight alongside him, as he did not trust Bucky. 

“Steve didn’t want to leave me alone,” Bucky said, not realizing he was explaining until he began to talk. “He thought Thor would be able to stop me. If it was needed.”

“It looks like he did stop you,” Clint responded, indicating the bruises on Bucky’s face, the way he held his arm gingerly tucked against his side. “Does that hurt?”

Bucky gave a one-shouldered shrug to avoid jarring the arm. “He didn’t hurt me as much as he could have.”

“No one will pick up where he left off when you come down,” Clint said. “If that’s what you’re afraid of. Jane explained what happened.”

Bucky almost opened his mouth to spit out that he wasn’t afraid, not of anybody, before he realized how childish that would make him seem, and also that it was a lie. Bucky didn’t want to leave the roof. He wanted to stay here. He didn’t want to face Steve, to see the disappointment in his eyes, the weariness and the doubt. 

Clint saw his reluctance, turned slightly to face him. “You were made into a killing machine. It makes sense that your first instinct is to kill.”

Bucky stared at this cool assessment. “I could have snapped Jane’s neck.”

“Well, you didn’t,” Clint said, evenly. “You were forced to kill, but that’s not who you are.” He paused, shrugged with a wry weariness that sat uneasily with his usual light-heartedness. “Or that’s what I tell myself.”

Bucky knew this story as Steve had told it to him, knew that Clint had been forced to fight under Loki’s control. “I know that for me it was hours, and for you decades,” Clint said, with the same restrained even tone. “But I see their faces, still. They try to talk to me at night, lie down next to me and call my name and ask me why.” 

“It wasn’t…your fault,” Bucky tried, echoing the kind of platitudes Steve used to soothe his own demons. “He – Loki - made you do it. You didn’t decide.” 

Clint tilted his chin down, smiled without humor. “What about you?” he asked. “I supposed you asked to have your arm turned into a weapon? Asked to be made to kill, made to forget?”

Bucky turned slightly. Clint was mocking him. It was a long time since anyone had mocked him. He wasn’t sure what the right response would be. Clint let him think about it for a while before he took pity on him. 

“Steve’s safe,” he said. “Unharmed.”

“Thanks…thank you for telling me,” Bucky said. 

Clint nodded, deliberately casual to put him at ease. “He wanted to come up here first thing. Bruce convinced him to let me talk to you first.” He stretched lazily, extending his arms and cracking his knuckles. “Will you stop being a child and come down now? Cory’s hungry.”

The chameleon’s long tongue flicked out, its eyes swiveling balefully. 

 

Steve was waiting in the apartment, tension visible in the lines of his body. He was still wearing the clothes he’d worn on the mission, his face grimy and filmed with grey dust, clothes blood-spattered. For a second, Bucky’s heart seized, before he remembered Clint had said Steve was unharmed. The blood couldn’t be his. 

Arden was perched on a shelf, but when Bucky came in she flew right to him and landed on his shoulder. The steadiness of her weight centered him, made the cowardly hyena stop hiding and come forward to meet this challenge head on. Bucky cleared his throat. “You okay?” he asked, struggling to hide the depth of his concern. “How’d it go?”

“I’m fine,” Steve said. “Not even a scratch.” He cast a quick glance at the nearest sensor, tilting his head, and Bucky understood he couldn’t say much more about the mission. There was a brief, strained pause, and then the question came: “I heard there was a…uh…an incident?” Steve asked, too casual by far. 

Bucky couldn’t do this dance right now. He cut to the chase, leaned against the wall and folded his arms. “Don’t tell me it wasn’t my fault.” 

Steve nodded. “I wasn’t going to. Clint already told me it wouldn’t help. Is your arm broken?”

“No,” Bucky said, then because Steve looked expectant: “Just bruised.” 

Steve frowned. “Maybe you should go to medical, get it checked out anyway.” Arden plucked at Bucky’s sleeve with her beak, and he sighed and obediently rolled the sleeve up. Thor had caught his arm to throw him against the wall and his grip had left a dark band of bruising from elbow to shoulder. Steve reached out, hand curling very gently around Bucky’s upper arm, turning it to the light, thumb stroking across the blue-purple skin. 

Bucky felt something shiver through him from the warmth of Steve’s touch. “Did you ever think you would be friends with a man who left bruises on women?” he asked softly, into the quiet, too intimate moment. He needed to pull away, and he couldn’t make himself, so he had to push Steve away instead. 

It worked, well enough. Steve stepped back, frowned. “Don’t,” he said, with an edge of anger, of frustration. “You’re not like that. They all know that.”

“All?” Bucky echoed, cautiously. 

Steve held his gaze. “Bruce made me see what this would be like. Clint too. I know he spoke to you. He understands."

"Because he was used as I was?"

"Because he's lived this. He could have been you. Any of us could have been you. And he knows it better than most." Steve paused. "I want you…need you…to know, even Thor recognizes that you did not intend to hurt anyone.”

“It doesn’t matter if I intended to or not,” Bucky said, reasonably. “I did.” Lobo, who knew what this statement of fact would provoke, slunk behind the couch and peered out at them, tasting the charged air, the confrontation to come. He hated confrontation. 

“It matters, Bucky,” Steve responded, intent and serious. “Intentions always matter. They have to. Otherwise, why do we do what we do? Any of us?”

Steve was standing very close to Bucky, and he smelled of killing and metal and weariness, and Bucky knew that Steve was remembering the blood on his own hands, counting up his own crimes, the deaths dismissed by those who did not do the killing, the orphaned and the widowed and the childless left behind, the “collateral damage.” Bucky could see what he had called forth, and it was not what he had intended. This time, at least, the intention mattered. This time, Bucky would make it matter. For once he would be the one to force things to change, to make what he wanted clear. And it was not confrontation he wanted. 

Steve was his only link to what had been, holder of the stories connecting yesterday and today. Steve had offered his unconditional friendship long ago, allowed Bucky to learn to see the beauty in the creature that was the reflection of his soul. Steve was his harbor in the storm, his bridge back to sanity. And now he was looking at Bucky, asking him mutely for reassurance, because he had become used to being relied upon, being the one others looked to for guidance. And Bucky wanted to give him more than reassurance. 

Before he could lose his nerve, he leaned forward and tentatively touched his lips to Steve’s. He didn’t know what he had expected. For everything to make sense immediately, perhaps, for the realization to break that they had done this before, many times. That was not what happened. 

Steve made a soft surprised sound at first, and Bucky was going to pull away, apologize, but before he could strong hands were cradling his face, were holding him there, turning his experimental kiss into something urgent, bolder, more desperate, something that involved tongue and teeth and hunger. Bucky was driven back against the wall with a hard thud. He was surrounded by strength and the familiar smells of war, of metal and blood and smoke, and for a moment he was somewhere else, sharing warmth beneath threatening skies, looking into eyes that understood, eyes wide and darkened with desire, tasting love and lust shot through with fear of death and discovery. 

From what seemed like far away, Arden gave a screeching triumph cry and Lobo did the vowel-long sound he did when pleased, and at that reminder of where they were, they were brought back to here and now, foreheads almost touching, breath mingling. Steve’s restrained command was gone. His eyes mirrored want-desire-confusion, pupils blown wide, surrounded by a thin ring of silver blue. Memories rushed through Bucky, the conviction that this had happened long ago, and he could not tell if what he remembered was real or what he wished was real. “Did we do this before?” he asked, in a rush, because Steve was just looking at him like he didn’t know what to say, and the look in his eyes meant it was about then as much as now. Steve nodded, wordless. 

“Were we…together?”

“No,” Steve said, stepping back. “It was never like that.” His voice wistful, soft, as though afraid to shatter something fragile. Arden settled on his shoulder, beat her wings, sent the air rippling, distracting him enough that he turned and stroked her tilted head. Like Lobo, she was picking up on their uncertainty, on the delicate balance between the rightness of this and the wrongness of what it could be. 

“What was it like then?” Bucky asked, making it clear that he needed the answer now, right now, that Steve’s slowly-slowly approach to putting his memories together would not work, not with this story. Lobo had come to stand at his feet. _Easy,_ the hyena advised, because caution had been his watchword, and because he knew how much Bucky had dreamed of more. 

Steve stepped back some more and as the space between them widened he withdrew into his role as caretaker, someone instructed by the whole team of psychiatrists assigned to this case behind the scene, consulting with them about how to take care of the broken Winter Soldier. “I shouldn’t have done that,” he began, already settling into that familiar role. 

“You didn’t,” Bucky interrupted, coolly. “I started it.”

Steve almost – almost – crooked a small grin at that flat statement of playground talk. “Yes, you did kind of start it,” he agreed, “but…but this isn’t how I would have wanted to bring up our past...relationship.”

Bucky scowled. “It doesn’t matter how you wanted to bring it up, now it’s already brought up. So tell me.” He ignored the unease of his daemon. _Let it be,_ the hyena told him. _Forget the past. Take now._

A look of consternation flickered on Steve’s face. “Buck, I…I just think…maybe this isn’t the right time...”

“Tell me. Now,” Bucky gritted out, not letting Steve retreat into some attempt at doing-what-is-best. “I need to know.”

At this uncharacteristic insistence, Steve finally saw that he was serious. He nodded slightly, gently stroking Arden’s head, finger tracing over delicate feathers as a distraction. There was a flicker shame in the downward tilt of his head. “I…told you that I loved you, once. I was drunk. I tried to pretend it was a joke, of course, but you knew that I meant what I said.” He paused, a wry twist coming to his lips. “You could always tell when I was lying.”

“Did I say it back?” Bucky asked quietly, because he’d seen enough by now to know that was the right answer. He must have said it back. Surely even then he knew it was the truth. That there was no one else. That Steve balanced him. 

Steve shook his head, not quite looking at Bucky. “You told me it wasn’t right…you said you would find me a girl and that I would be happy. And you did your best to do that, over the years. Until Peggy.”

Bucky blinked. Something hurt in his chest, made it difficult to breathe. Unconsciously, he found his fingers tangled in Lobo’s fur. The story was wrong. Steve had to be lying to him. He remembered looking at the golden boy who had read out the words of a poem about all things counter, original, spare, strange, and feeling his heart would burst with too much feeling. 

“I kissed you,” Bucky said slowly, “I remember kissing you.” 

“You took pity on me sometimes,” Steve said, with a slight shrug. “And…we did more than kiss then. Those nights, it meant a lot to me, that you cared enough to let me have that. Intentions again. Yours, they were…honorable.” He smiled a little. 

The tightening in Bucky’s chest got worse. How selfish he must have been, to let Steve think that it was pity that motivated him. “It wasn’t pity,” he said, the words too quick, too insistent. “It was real.” 

Still distracting himself with petting Arden to avoid looking at Bucky, Steve shook his head. “I’ve lived with what this for a long time, Buck. I don’t need you to make me feel better.” 

“It was real,” Bucky repeated, but already he could see the repetition did not matter. Steve would not believe what he had never seen back then, what Bucky had been too cowardly to show. And now everything Bucky said was suspect, because he was a broken thing, was a once human. “I remember.” 

_And you think he will believe you,_ Lobo mocked. Bucky blocked him out. 

Steve looked up. “You remember now?” He smiled gently, but did not try to hide his skepticism. “You’re sure of this when you’ve not been sure of anything else? How do you expect me to believe that?” His voice was not exactly bitter, but the weariness was recrimination enough. 

Bucky wanted to tell him he did not remember everything, but that did not matter. He took too long trying to formulate his words. 

“I need a shower, Buck,” Steve said, once the silence stretched out too long, letting his tiredness show for once. “Can we talk more about this more later?”

Bucky nodded, subdued, pushing his hands into his pockets to keep them from clenching into fists. “Later,” he echoed. “Sure.”

 

Steve emerged from his room with wet hair, in a worn t-shirt and sweatpants and bare feet, not an invincible superhero anymore, not a killer or a hero, just another man at the end of a very long day. He leaned on the doorjamb of Bucky’s room. “Okay?” he asked, tentatively, because he was always the one who took the first step back to their strange equilibrium. 

Bucky was sitting on the edge of the bed, waiting for a later that was now, for a talk that he suspected might involve regret and uncertainty and everything he did not want. Lobo and Arden had come together, allies in this watching and waiting game, and Bucky had noticed what he realized he had seen before, long ago, that the pattern on the eagle’s wings was not so different from the hyena’s coloring -- they were once one team, and they would be again.

He stood up, facing Steve, took a step closer, saw wariness, and longing, saw the boy he had been in the man he was, and found the words he needed. “If it wasn’t real then, I want it to be real now,” he said, looking straight at Steve, holding his gaze, calm and serious, refusing to let his moment turn into anything but what he knew they both wanted. 

He saw immediately that they were the right words, that this was the right way to do this. Steve looked at him differently. “You want…?”

“Yes. If you do,” Bucky said, the simplicity of the words not keeping them from reverberating with the need behind them. This was right. This had to be. 

Steve crossed the room in two strides and this time it was like the self-assured meeting of reborn souls, not soft or sweet or gentle, but a declaration of intent, an announcement, a claiming, memories interlacing with now. 

“Wanted this for so long,” Steve whispered between the desperate meeting of mouths.

Steve’s hands were running under Bucky’s shirt. The air seemed too thick to breathe. Bucky remembered what kissing Steve’s neck did when he put the edge of teeth into it, just there, and when he did it now he heard the soft plosive whimper that sounded like Steve was right there, right on the edge. Bucky forgot what he had become enough that he allowed himself to touch back. He reached out to run both hands upward under cloth to feel hot skin, and only realized what he had done when Steve stilled suddenly, flinching as he registered the touch of metal fingers, cold and foreign and wrong, on his bare back.

“Sorry,” Bucky blurted out, pulling back quickly, only to have Steve catch his arm forcefully, draw him back, and then raise the bionic hand, deliberate and careful, to his mouth, pressing a gentle kiss on the back. It should have been silly, the courtly gesture of a shining knight saluting his lady beloved’s hand recast in a monstrous horror show with a freakish robot-armed assassin. But somehow it was not silly, not even close. And then Steve turned the gesture into an act of playful seduction, drawing two of the cold inhuman metal fingers into his mouth, very slowly sucking, in intimate mimicry. Bucky felt the wet heat around the not-his yet sensitive metal skin, and it was almost unbearably erotic. 

Bucky swallowed as the metal fingers slid out slowly. “I want you to open me up with these one day,” Steve whispered into the silence, abashed and daring, wanting, and at those whispered words Bucky felt something like an electric current running through his body. That was going to happen. He’d make it happen, soon.

He tugged at Steve urgently, drawing them toward the bed. They fell back onto the mattress, shoving clothes out of the way with inelegant frantic haste, Bucky underneath Steve’s heavy and demanding weight, that stutter in his memory, a difference between then and now that now made his breath catch and his heart pound. 

“I want to make you feel good,” Steve murmured, hands reverent even as he practically ripped Bucky’s shirt off, tugging it out from underneath. 

Bucky frowned at this. Steve was still in caretaker role. That would not do. He rolled them over so he was the one on top, looking down at blue eyes that widened as Steve instinctively tensed in readiness to defend himself, and that made Bucky’s heart hurt. “Relax. Even the soldier wouldn’t hurt you,” he murmured. “Think he remembered this?” He ground down, canted his hips just so, reveled in the gasp it drew. He thrust his hips again, finding the right angle. Steve huffed a laugh at Bucky’s urgency. “So you’re not planning on taking this slow?” he found the breath to say, just as Bucky found the right alignment of their bodies, turning everything from a tangle of limbs to something that made Steve’s breath hiss and forced Bucky to make a sound that would have embarrassed him if it hadn’t also made Steve laugh.

“Slow is good,” Bucky managed. “But later.” For now, it was quick, messy, urgent, and a little – a lot – silly in hindsight. 

“Maybe we should have taken the rest of our clothes off first,” Bucky said, afterwards, breathing harder than he should be, elation mixed up with anxiety. “I think this was pretty much like the first time we did this, actually,” Steve murmured, the smile evident in his voice. He turned his head, and again, did something that should have been truly silly, kissing Bucky’s metal shoulder, but somehow the unabashed sweetness of the act made Bucky feel as though he’d been given a badge of honor – and he’d wear it with pride. 

 

The second time was slower, was drawn out deliberately. It was wordless, the relearning of each other’s bodies by touch and gesture, interpreting moans and the tiniest pick ups in breath, until they were worn out and loose-limbed, lassitude creeping up on them with a new-old contentment. They didn’t need to say anything, their eyes spoke for them, and in rediscovering what this was, what they once had, Bucky felt the life of the past return, the color come into the black and white of half-memories. 

 

Bucky tried to slip away after, intending to find somewhere else to sleep. Steve caught him by the arm that Thor had bruised, and Bucky winced, tried to hide it, saw that it was too late because Steve had moved his grip, but not released him. “Nightmares,” Bucky muttered, in explanation. He could have just pulled away, of course. He didn’t want to. “Let me go.”

“Sorry, but you’re not leaving,” Steve said, wearing his patient but stubborn face. “I have nightmares too.”

Bucky sighed. “You don’t turn into a killing machine in your sleep. Clint said no one should be surprised, but that doesn’t mean we should take any chances.”

“Clint’s a smart guy. I won’t let you kill me,” Steve said, economically, and hauled Bucky back into bed. “I promise, and I told you I was going to keep all my promises.” 

Bucky let himself be hauled, and then Steve anchored him in place, his head resting on Bucky’s chest with finality. “Your head is heavy,” Bucky informed him, after a beat. Steve grunted and moved, but then flung an immovable arm over Bucky’s waist, another way to prevent him from moving. “No,” Bucky said, dangerously. “I am not going to be the little spoon.”

Steve spluttered at the dire threat in his tone and Bucky turned swiftly and kissed him while he was still laughing, because he was pretty sure that was a first, and he wanted a first this time round, he wanted Steve to have a first memory of him as he was now, Bucky-the soldier-James. He wouldn’t tell Steve, but Bucky was jealous of himself, jealous of what the boy he was once could have had when he had not recognized its worth. 

Steve easily reversed their positions, so he was the one tucked back against Bucky, despite the slight different in height. Though Bucky would never say it, this was more effective than the other way. He did not want to let go, wanted to tighten his arm around Steve, to guard his back, hold him close. 

“Don’t tell anyone, but I missed this,” Steve whispered, some moments later, in the forgiving darkness. Bucky remembered the drawing of two boys who found comfort in closeness, the little skinny boy with the golden eagle of the heroes in stories, the resentful boy who had learned to love the cursed creature that was the reflection of his soul. “I missed it too,” he said, stilted, but more honest than he had ever been. 

 

The room was pitch black when Bucky woke up fighting, screaming. Steve’s hands had settled on his shoulders, pushing him down into the bed, one knee anchoring his inhuman arm. “Hey,” Steve said, “Back with me?” When Bucky had stopped moving he did not let go immediately. He knew better. Bucky forced his shaking limbs to relax. Lobo was standing at the end of the bed, bristly mane on end and eyes wild, and Arden fluttered anxiously. “Sorry,” Bucky said, and then the word would not stop repeating, “Sorry, sorry, sorry.”

Steve shut him up by kissing him, hard, holding his face still. Bucky let Steve take control of this, let this be an uncompromising taking of what he wanted, transferring years of pent up emotions into this moment. He remembered that Steve then had been as commanding, as in control, as the man he was now. He remembered that he had liked that. 

“Promise me something,” Steve asked – no, demanded, when he pulled back. Bucky made a sound of assent, not wanting to say “anything,” but when Steve waited, he said, cautiously, “Anything I can.” 

“Promise you won’t leave,” Steve said, “You can do that, can’t you? That’s all I ask. Wherever this goes. Even if I mess this up. If you can’t do this, tell me. Don’t run.” Imploring met with command, and Bucky thought: this was Steve asking and ordering at once, and taking the blame for the failures sure to come, the leader accepting the burden of responsibility. 

“I can’t run from you. I’m yours,” Bucky said, into the waiting silence, because it was true, and Steve’s gaze darkened with intense pleasure, with possessiveness tinged with fierce hunger. Bucky reached up and sealed his declaration, announcing his intention – more than a promise, an oath. “And you’re mine.”

“Yes,” Steve said, like it was self-evident, but it only took a moment before the inevitable hesitation came back and was easily read in the worry that stole into his face: he was thinking that he was taking advantage, that this was the soldier needing a handler, not a man needing his friend to be his everything. “You’re sure, Buck? This is what you want?”

“I’m sure,” Bucky said, without hesitation, firmly, not allowing doubt to touch his words, hoping his response would assuage the worry, if it did not erase it. 

And he was sure. It was different now, but enough was the same for him to fell the rightness of the ever-there connection, and all he had to do was to set about proving it with everything he had, speaking what could not be spoken with his mouth and his hands and his body, making Steve see the truth of their claim on one another. 

 

“Should I congratulate you?” Thea asked, the next day, tilting her head. 

Bucky raised startled eyes to her, frowning. He’d been watching Lobo and Thea’s daemon. They were dancing around an introduction, warming up to each other, though Lobo was still resentful of the border collie’s ability to bring a smile to his companion’s face. It was almost the end of their session. Steve would come by soon to pick him up for dinner. 

“Why?” he asked Thea. “Why would you congratulate me?” 

“You smiled just now,” she said, gently. “And you’ve been different today…happier.”

“Happier?” Bucky asked, because he felt better about asking than answering. “Not just happy? Not like I’ve found my happily ever after?”

Thea smiled. “Well, no. No one ever does. The way happy is used, as a directive, be happy, find happiness, is not particularly helpful.” She paused, characteristically modest, and amended, “At least, not in my view. I think of it more as a balance. You can’t be happy if you’re not unhappy sometimes.” 

“So being unhappy is good?” Bucky asked, skeptically, lifting his brows, settling into his role as devil’s advocate. He enjoyed pushing back against some of Thea’s more counter-intuitive pronouncements, even though they were all pretty prosaic, not much of the mumbo-jumbo fortune cookie fake wisdom he had feared. 

Thea shrugged. “There’s nothing wrong with feeling sad. The problem is that we’re somehow programmed to remember sadness more than sweetness, pain more than joy.” She paused, considering, and then turned her right wrist over, with a ritualistic slowness, and pushed up her sleeve. Her daemon immediately came to sit at her feet, nudging his nose against her arm. “We have scars to remind us of past pain, but nothing that reminds us of past joys.” Across her wrist were the words _kiss the joy as it flies._

Bucky, understanding what she did not say, said, “I’m glad you chose not to rest forever.” This woman had guided him through dark paths, and the wisdom that she had shared with him, he understood now, came from her having walked through her own darkness.

She pushed down her sleeve again and patted her daemon in thanks for his support. “One day I will rest, and that end is the only ever after there is for me. As for happiness…I say we’re on a daily journey to be happier.” She shook her head as though dismissing the memories. “But you were certainly further along than most days today.” She looked curious. “Do you want to tell me?”

“About?” Bucky hedged, looking at Lobo instead of at Thea.

“Yourself and Steve of course,” she said, giving him an arch look. 

Bucky hesitated. “He deserves to be happy. Happier.”

“And what would make him happier?” Thea asked, eyes crinkling slightly at his correction.

“Someone like Peggy,” Bucky said, after a moment’s pause, thinking back. Someone strong, someone whole, someone selfless, who could give him love freely, could focus on him fully, make him the priority, for now if not for ever after. Someone with a daemon as noble, as courageous as Arden was. 

Almost anyone other than Bucky. 

Thea shook her head, but before she could speak, the knock came. After waiting for Thea’s call to come in, Steve opened the door, leaned against the jamb. “Ready?” he asked, looking at Bucky. His face told the story of earlier, eyes soft and bright as those of a child enraptured by first love, and it only made Bucky cringe a little bit when he realized that the shirt Steve was wearing revealed some of the marks he’d left. 

Bucky saw Thea smile, then hide her satisfied benevolent approval with practiced restraint, folding in into a business-like demeanor. She stood up, shook hands with Bucky briskly, and then said, sotto voce, but with a gleam in her eyes, “I see you didn’t need my advice.” 

He arched his brows questioningly. “Kissing the joy,” she murmured, barely containing her smirk. “Not always metaphorical.” And he couldn’t help but crack a small smile at that, glancing back at a patiently waiting Steve. Oh, he knew.

**Author's Note:**

> CW: gun violence, homophobia
> 
>  
> 
> I finished writing this before I heard about the shooting in Orlando. And I couldn't post it without adding this note. I know this might not be the place, but I feel like I need to say this anyway...because there's a lot in reality that makes me turn to imagination, but I don't call it escapist, I call it finding light and joy and love in a world that can be dark and lonely and depressing. A world where people can be killed for how they choose to love.
> 
> There's another reason I'm compelled to say this, and that is because I'm a queer Muslim, and my heart hurts at both the homophobia that caused this atrocity, and the Islamophobia that this massacre will stoke...
> 
> May the victims rest in peace, and may their loved ones find patience to bear this horror. 
> 
> Love and blessings to everyone reading this.


End file.
